


When We're Lonely

by thursdaysgirl



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 16:53:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20642492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thursdaysgirl/pseuds/thursdaysgirl
Summary: Tom/Mary. They are both missing their deceased spouses and neither of them are ready to move on, but when they're lonely? Well, they have each other. Basically smut. First time writing this pairing or this fandom.





	When We're Lonely

Tom hadn’t been sleeping lately He found himself wandering the hallways until all hours, long after the downstairs staff had retired for the night Tonight he had looked in on his sleeping daughter, gently pushed back the dark curls from around Sybbie’s cherubic face. She grew more and more like the mother she had never known with every passing day.

Tom knew he should probably be moving on, but it was so difficult when Sybil and the rest of this family were wound so tightly around his heart

He couldn’t help but think of Mary. She was his sister in law; she was family. It was wrong to think of her as anything else. She understood his grief; his guilt; his pain as no other could. She had lost her own husband so quickly and so cruelly. She was also raising a child who would never remember one of their birth parents. She too was trying to take the first tentative steps to seek out the possibilities of new romance.

Their friendship had come as something of a surprise. They were from different worlds. She had no thought him good enough for her precious younger sister. But Mary had never been one to be constrained by the formalities of “upstairs” and “downstairs” as proven by her easy intimacy with Anna, with Carson and even Thomas Barrow. It may have been shared grief that united them, but something more held them together. 

She was Sybil’s opposite in so many ways; acerbic and brusque where her sister had been open and sweet. She operated with cool logic, while Sybil had always led with her heart. Sybil was more of her mother, while Mary had more than a little of her grandmother in her. Mary was all slim angles and a sharp haircut, where Sybil had been curves and softness. He wanted her.

As if his very thoughts had woken her, Tom stopped his pacing and saw Mary before him. The moonlight casting shadows across her aristocratically fine-boned face and showing off her thin chemise to its best advantage. He cleared his throat.

“Mary,” His voice was still rough with need; with desires he knew he should not possess. Not for her.

“Whatever are you doing at this time of the night?” 

“I could ask you the same question.” There, that was better, he was recovering himself. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” she sighed, stepping closer so they could keep their voices low. “I was thinking a drop of brandy might help.”

She turned to lead the way to the drawing room. Tom hesitated before following; surely she was going to at least put her dressing gown on? Maybe she thought of him too much of a brother to worry over her state of undress. Perhaps he should offer her his own robe, but thinking of her slim frame dwarfed by it was not helping his suddenly traitorous imagination.

Mary poured them both a brandy in cut glass crystal tumblers. Tom took a sip from his and placed the glass on the coaster. He spun it around and around in his fingers, as if the activity might burn up some of his restless, nervous energy. Mary never normally made him feel uncomfortable, not any more anyway, but now he felt jumpy and awkward. 

“What was keeping you up tonight?” She asked, her eyebrow arched in question. There was a touch of amusement playing around her lips, Tom was shocked to realise he wanted to kiss the smirk off them.

You, he wanted to say. He wanted to see the surprise on her face; disquiet her constant composure. He longed to slide the straps of that flimsy excuse for a nightgown from her narrow shoulders until it pooled at her feet. Christ. He took another sip of the brandy, rolled the liquid around in his mouth before letting it burn down his throat to his stomach. Maybe it would mute his desire, but instead it only seemed to encourage the flames.

“This and that,” He mumbled. “What was keeping you awake?”

“Worrying about George, not driving this place into the ground, keeping the farm afloat,” Mary gesticulated with the hand not holding her brandy. “This and that.”

“Mary,” He began before even knowing what words would follow. “Are you lonely?”

Surprise glowed in Mary’s eyes for a moment. 

“Yes, I am. I seem to be surrounded by people every moment of every day, but yes, I’m lonely.”

“Me too,” Tom replied, reaching out to cover her hand with his. It could be interpreted as a friendly, brother in law gesture, or something more if she chose to see it. “Desperately.”

“Tom,” Her breath caught as she said his name. “Has there…has there been anyone since Sybil?”

The mention of his beloved late wife’s name had him pulling his hand back.

“No,” He said softly. “No one.”

“Not for me either; not since Matthew.”

The room seemed to almost vibrate around them. 

“I miss him terribly,” She continued. “I don’t know when or if I’ll ever be ready to love again.” She reached for Tom’s hand this time. “But I miss the intimacy; I miss being touched and touching in return.”

“Mary,” There was a low warning tone in his voice. 

“Please Tom,”

Oh God, he realised. Her needs were just as strong as his. It flitted across his mind that maybe she had engineered this somehow. The late night meeting, the alcohol and that silky, see-through negligee.

Blindly he reached for her, pulling her into his arms and filling his senses with her. Her lips pressed against his, firm and demanding at first but then yielding as they moved together. It felt right, so horribly right that there might not be a way back out. But that was for another time and another place. His hands slid up from her waist, over the swell of her breasts and cupped them. She moaned when he rubbed his thumbs over the peaks of her nipples, and his hardness only increased in response. He pulled back for a moment, he needed to know she wanted this too before he pushed it too far and ruined what already existed between them. Her eyes were almost all pupil they were so dilated with desire, without taking her gaze from his she slid the straps of her chemise from her shoulders and let it fall away. She stood naked before him and watched the hunger grow in his eyes.

“Mary, you’re beautiful,” 

“Tom,” Her voice was a low warning as she advanced on him, helping him out of his dressing gown, and then unbuttoning his nightshirt with an agonising slowness that drove him to distraction. She dropped to her knees as she helped him out of his pyjama trousers, trailing her fingers gently over his hard length. His eyes rolled back in his head as the mere brush of her fingertips, it had been so long since anyone but himself had touched him like this. She moved her hand up and down his stiffness, growing more confident with every stroke.

Good God, he thought. Who would have imagined the Lady Mary on her knees before him, working him to release with her hands and now her mouth? He was getting close and that wasn’t how he wanted this to end.

“Mary,” He croaked out. “I want you.”

The words burned through her as he joined her on the thick rug in front of the long extinguished fireplace. He lowered his body over hers, pressing his lips to hers while he hand sought out the warmth and wetness between her thighs. He trailed his fingers over the triangle of dark curls at the apex of her thighs and further until he could slide his index and middle fingers into the slick heat. She cried out softly as he curled his fingers, rubbing the pads of his fingertips inside her and sliding his thumb over the swollen clit. 

“Want to watch you,” He breathed, drawing her up and up until she was on the edge of her climax. She came with a sign and a groan, her muscles gripping Tom’s fingers. 

He kissed her face; her lips, her eyelids and down to where her pulse hammered in her throat. She wrapped her arms around his neck, twisted her fingers into his short hair as he moved down to kiss her breasts, suck on her nipples. He dipped his tongue into her bellybutton and pressed kisses over the dark thatch of her pubic hair. Mary bit into her fist when Tom slipped his tongue inside her, the other hand tugging on his hair now. He brought her up to the edge again, letting her fall over the peak again. By the time he slid inside her, filling her, she was slick and ready for him. 

“Tom,” She moaned, meeting his thrusts and arching her hips. She was blind and deaf to anything but him and the pleasure he was giving her. She reached between them and rubbed her sensitive clit until she clenched around him again, driving him to find his own climax. 

He cried out into her shoulder, muffling the sound against her milk white flesh. They lay like that for a little while until their flesh began to cool.

“Mary I…” Tom began as he sat up next to her. 

“We were both lonely,” She said, pushing her sweaty hair away from her face. “Maybe this can be something we do when we’re lonely.”

She stood up on unsteady legs, a pleasant ache between her thighs. She slipped her chemise over her head and handed Tom his discarded night clothes. 

Tom’s head was spinning as he dressed. He couldn’t believe that his most sordid, most erotic fantasies had just come true and exceeded all of his guilty dreams. He crossed the room to her and placed kiss to her lips, the chasteness of which contrasted with what had just happened between them. 

“You know where to find me,” He said softly as she made her way to the door. “When you’re lonely.”


End file.
